Content Marketing

Have you ever watched the 100-meter Olympics race? In the race, every athlete tries to outrun the others, and the one who finishes first wins the race. It may be because they had better fitness or better preparation than their competition. Similarly, in the marketplace, brands compete, and the winner uses their resources most efficiently. For brands, content marketing is one of the essential techniques that they use to outperform their competitors. In this explanation, we cover the concepts of content marketing and how brands use it to their advantage.

Content Marketing Definition

Brands face fierce market competition as many product and service categories have become saturated. Access to a broader audience via the Internet has created opportunities for some brands. For others, it has left question marks on their survival. Brands are actively searching for different approaches in marketing to attract and engage their target audiences. Content marketing is another technique in the book of marketing through which brands are trying to sway their audience.

Customers have numerous options when it comes to selecting a product or service. There is so much noise around that brands could struggle to break through this clutter. Content marketing gives this edge to brands as they can focus on the target audience's specific needs and provide them with tailored solutions. It enables brands to retain existing customers and convert potential customers into new ones. Marketers use content marketing to deliver value and increase their return on investment (ROI).

Figure 1. GoPro uses its own videos for content marketing

Content marketing helps brands align their messages with the target audience's needs. It enables them to create a strong relationship with their customers.

Content Marketing Strategy

A business needs a strategy to plan, execute, and evaluate content marketing activities. It provides a framework for content creation and helps align content marketing with the business's goals. Marketers create videos, audio, and textual content by implementing the content marketing strategy. Here are the steps through which brands can develop a content marketing strategy.

1. Identify the audience – To ensure that the content marketing strategy achieves the desired results, identify the target audience. It is about finding out the preferences and needs of the target audience. It gives critical insights about the customers and helps in developing a strategy.

   Take a look at our explanation of Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning to find out more.

2. Focus on problems you want to solve – Identify the issues of the target audience and focus on the ones you want to solve through your business offering. The problem-solving approach helps connect the brand with the customers more deeply. It also helps in increasing engagement.

3. Figure out your uniqueness – There is tough competition in the marketplace. Determining your uniqueness is essential to stand out from the rest. It provides answers to the target audience as to why they should select a particular brand over others.

4. Identify channels – A website is the primary source of online presence for a brand, but it is not enough. Identify other online channels (e.g., social media, blogs, etc.) to use for content marketing. Marketers can attract the target audience by delivering consistent messages across various marketing channels.

5. Manage content – At the final stage, figure out how to manage content. It helps keep the content marketing strategy on track and rectify errors along the way.

Advantages of Content Marketing

There are many advantages of content marketing. Here we talk about a few of them.

• Higher ranking in search engines – Content marketing helps optimize the website or other channel in terms of its visual appeal, page speed, and relevant keywords. It helps the website rank higher in search engines, making it easier for the target audience to access the content.

• More traffic from other websites – Marketers publish posts on other high-traffic sites as guests. It enables them to generate backlinks, i.e., driving traffic to their websites. It generates more clicks on the websites.

• Increased traffic from social media – To ace content marketing, it is essential to have a solid social media presence. The marketer can use this presence to drive more traffic to the website.

• Better conversion – Through content marketing, brands generate better conversions.

Disadvantages of Content Marketing

• No quick results – There is no quick fix in content marketing. It takes some time for marketers to see the results. For instance, even after doing everything possible for SEO to work, it could take a few weeks or even months before you can see the desired results. Content marketing is a long-term strategy, and marketers must have patience for it to work.

• Specific skills required – Content marketing is an approach only experts can implement effectively. A company must hire marketers with expertise in content marketing who understand which audiences to target and how to create engaging content to implement this approach.

• Frequent need for new ideas – For content marketing to work, it is essential to come up with fresh ideas frequently. If your content is repetitive, it could quickly lose its effectiveness.

Types of Content Marketing

Brands use different types of content marketing. In the strategy development stage, they decide on the types of content marketing they want to employ. Here are a few types of content marketing.

• Blog posts – Blog posts are a part of a website where marketers regularly provide relevant content to the customers. It enables marketers to build brand awareness through content. Customers engage more with this kind of content.

• Videos – Video content marketing is another type. Marketers produce videos to engage with customers and increase conversions. It is an entertaining and engaging way to attract the audience.

• Infographics – Marketers can use infographics content marketing to deliver complex information to the target audience in an effective manner. The visuals help customers understand the provided information, leading to increased engagement.

• Testimonials and reviews – This form of content is an effective way of adding quality and relevant content on websites. It adds faces or names to the messages, improving the content's credibility.

• Social media content marketing – Marketers use social media presence to attract and engage the target audience. Social media platforms enable marketers to target specific audiences and keep track of their marketing campaigns.

Content Marketing Examples

Brands worldwide use content marketing to attract, engage and retain customers. Let's go through a couple of real-life examples.

Airbnb

Airbnb uses content marketing to provide an excellent experience to its users. The user-generated content, such as reviews, ratings, etc., is key to its content marketing strategy. It communicates detailed information about the services on the apps. Users get prompt answers to their questions.

Figure 2. Airbnb's user-generated content - The key to its content marketing success

Spotify

At the end of every year, Spotify provides charts to its users based on their listening history. They can see the names of the musicians and the genres they listened to frequently in the past year. This campaign is known as Spotify Wrapped.

Figure 3. Spotify wrapped - A masterstroke in content marketing